Hurry Up and Wait: Spatial Strategies for Urban Stress Relief, Part 1
A designer’s quest to transform the act of waiting into a welcome pause.
As a kid growing up on the outskirts of a small city just beyond the Greenbelt of southwestern Ontario, trips to Toronto — a city of six million people — were an event. When the Highway 403 gave way to the QEW and the hazy skyline grew in height and density, so too increased the giddy energy in my stomach. Toronto wasn’t a yet full-fledged city in my mind, rather a shorthand for a few neighbourhoods stitched together by the backseat of a minivan. Together they laid the backdrop for concerts in elegant buildings, food that you couldn’t find in restaurants at home, and people who dressed like celebrities and moved purposefully through the streets, perennially unperturbed. As a child, these urban adventures were exercises in patience: waiting for my mother to finish poring over each artefact in a museum exhibit, waiting until intermission to peer into the orchestra pit at the ballet, waiting for dumpling soup to cool down enough that it wouldn’t scald my mouth. Despite my impatience, city life had captivated me. I would go on to intern at architecture studios in a number of cities as an undergraduate student — Innsbruck, New York, Berlin, London — and by the time I returned to Toronto in my early twenties I had a more holistic picture of urban living. The freedom to navigate the streets had introduced a wider variety of experiences and a complex matrix of information to decode, information which allowed me to use transit systems, find shortcuts, develop routines predicated on a combination of safety, practicality and flights of fancy. I felt myself shift from tourist to local.
However, relationships are rarely one-sided. As I adapted to urban life, I felt my interactions with my environment become more unpredictable under the constant barrage of stimuli vying for my attention. A lifelong cyclist, I generally preferred taking my bike to relying on the whims of public transit, but I slowly found myself too nervous to get on a bike for days at a time. The baseline stress of being—navigating independent work in an open-plan office, the nuanced, unwritten rules governing the space I shared with two roommates, and the herd of commuters which shadowed me daily—seemed to elicit outsized panic responses, and my nervous system often screeched into high gear after an encounter as innocent as the opening door of a parked car or a passing siren. Crowds operated as flows rather than collections of individuals and my mind whirred as I subconsciously charted the least-resistant path to navigate the currents. I was finally a part of the fast-paced life I had craved as a child, but my ability to enjoy it felt compromised.
It would be irresponsible to conflate one personal anecdote with a larger phenomenon, but my experience was the start of an interest in researching how our bodies and brains process stress, and why stress becomes chronic. As I gained coping strategies and improved self-monitoring of my states of heightened stress, my inherent spatial sensibilities motivated me to turn this investigation to the role of the built urban environment in causing and mitigating stress.
In 2016, 82% of North Americans were, like me, living in urban centres. Two years later, the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects¹ report predicted that by 2050, two out of every three people in the world will live in a city or other urban centres. This flooding of new populations into already-dense communities is a fertile breeding ground for widespread social instability — increased competition for resources, a loss of identity for both newcomers and long-time residents, and feelings of isolation — all of which are catalysts for widespread chronic stress². People from urban centres have developed different connections between some regions of their brain than those who grew up in suburban or rural settings³. Urbanites have a weaker connection between their amygdala, which is responsible for sending emotions and distress responses to the body, and their anterior cingulate cortex, which regulates the amygdala’s sensitivity. This is concerning, given that multiple studies have correlated urban life with increased rates of mental illnesses all over the world⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸. The urban condition comes with a constant undercurrent of stress and modern life is fraught with environmental and social stressors. The buildings we inhabit can either exacerbate or mitigate the long-term effect of the urban stressors that are beyond our control. How can we foster a sense of self-assurance and security within our environment and the way we relate with our community? What does architectural stress relief look like and how can designers participate?
Abstract
In the midst of rising urban density and its projected impacts on infrastructures and city dwellers alike, the importance of understanding the effects of built space on our biology and mental well-being is becoming essential to responsible spatial design. This MArch thesis used lessons from current environmental psychology theory and mixed-methods biometric research to make an analytical design framework which promotes stress recovery and restoration of mental resources through elements of spatial design.
Identifying public waiting rooms as high-opportunity type of program within existing urban infrastructures led to the choice of Toronto Coach Terminal as a theoretical site in which to test the framework and to assess the value of restorative waiting environments. Architectural factors of scale, lighting, social organization, materiality, visual complexity, and enclosure are used as lenses through which to analyse the existing transit terminal, and to propose a customizable kit-of-parts to reimagine the waiting spaces therein. Seating areas and enclosures are retrofitted through a system of frames, connectors and panels to promote psycho-physiological restoration for a variety of users.
Topics of framework development and user testing methodologies are addressed in an attempt to make disciplinary boundaries more porous and to co-solve questions with spatial implications using all available resources. Since both waiting and stress impact city dwellers more severely and the world is becoming increasingly urbanized, better access to and more seamless integration of restorative environments in the incidental spaces of the public realm would play a role in the management of stress at a population level.
Chapter 1 | Human Impacts of Urbanization
To find solutions for mitigating urban stressors, it is necessary to first establish a clear picture of what stress looks like in people, and what in the environment causes it. Just as not all factors for stress are urban, not all factors for urban stress are spatial. So, what makes urban stress a challenge which architects are well-positioned to tackle? The fields of environmental psychology and neuroscience have begun to probe the ways in which architecture affects our mind and body, but this research has yet to be comprehensively translated into guidelines for design. Studies on the health and happiness of urbanites suggest that the needs of city dwellers are not being met by their architecture⁹. People feel dissatisfied with their dwellings to the point that a quarter of Americans don’t consider their place of residence to be ‘home’¹⁰. New Urbanists champion a community-driven approach to protecting and nourishing vital urban fabric amid a gentrifying popular North American culture, but what about the spaces which lack a community? Most of us spend over 90% of our time in manmade environments, and many spend a portion of that far from their home or in transit. Placemaking in the transitional public spaces of daily lives could foster a greater sense of wellbeing.
Just as not all factors for stress are urban, not all factors for urban stress are spatial. So, what makes urban stress a challenge which architects are well-positioned to tackle?
In architectural discourse, these interstitial urban spaces are often positioned as a generic “non-places,” a concept which architectural theorist Hans Ibelings borrows from philosopher Marc Augé. In Ibelings’ book Supermodernism, they observe the evolution of the international city toward increasingly generic and dematerialized forms. The airport, the subway station, the lobby: these places are largely unclaimed by a cohesive community and are designed as ‘Teflon architecture,”¹¹ an amorphously ‘non-stick’ spatial condition which encourages efficient passage between destinations. Teflon architecture discourages lingering by making attachments between user and place itself undesirable or even untenable, using a lack of affordances for prosocial behaviour.
In decades prior, this unclaimed urban fabric was cast as a space of pure potential. Alison Smithson advocated for Mat Urbanism, a type of urban plan expressed through clusters rather than linear streetscapes. The interstitial spaces between buildings are expressed as shared space belonging to local residents and pedestrians, and any mode of urban occupation is accommodated. Smithson held up the cellular Islamic urban fabric as a city plan which could accommodate generative growth, much like a trellis¹². However, due to increasing privatization of public space, the potential of the urban public remained unrealized. Tactical urbanism, or the use of informal ‘hacks’ to adapt public spaces to suit the needs of a particular community without significant permanent modification, is a compelling model of spatial production for designers to consider. How best to work with the cities we have inherited and find opportunities to integrate architectural interventions and additions into existing urban fabric?
‘An Impure Discipline’
The field of architecture is, to quote Juhani Pallasmaa, an ‘impure discipline¹³’, and it is natural and valuable to draw inspiration from other disciplines. Industrial designers have already generated myriad examples of tools which engage an individual’s focus through one or more senses, allowing the overstimulated mind to return to a relaxed state: think of weighted blankets, noise cancelling headphones, aromatherapy, patterned lights. Architecture is different from product design in timescale, budget, and the reliance on a client willing to invest in innovative design, so this surge of findings-based design has yet to fully infiltrate the field. However, it stands to reason that these barriers could be surpassed if spatial tactics could be effective at a slightly smaller scale than new-build architecture; as a hack, a retrofit or intervention. By using design tools to control haptic, acoustic, olfactory and visual input, a typology of architecture-modifiers could emerge. Imagine a mode of design which would invigorate these interstitial urban public places while helping with the management of stress for the populations who inhabit them. Public architecture is more accessible to the average citizen than therapy across financial, physical and cultural measures. This work aims to translate findings from other fields of study into a toolkit of spatial and material tactics which put research into reality; a guide to a more collaborative, interdisciplinary design approach. The design of the toolkit must be flexible enough to be integrated into existing urban spaces yet specific enough to serve as a strong framework for future city-building. This research culminates in a developed understanding of the ways in which urbanization leads to stress, a catalogue of the spatial qualities which are shown to alleviate stress through user engagement, and a series of small-scale architectural experiments designed and built to alleviate stress, and a method of user testing for efficacy. The proposition imagines a world in which urbanites are bolstered by the opportunities for respite afforded to them by their built environment, leading to resilience and eager engagement with the myriad benefits brought by urban living.
Mediums, Surfaces and Substances
The way humans interpret environmental stimuli has been a field of study for only the past few decades, stemming from great advances in the understanding of perception in the field of psychology. It was not until the 1950s that experimental psychologists developed a stimulus-response model which recognizes the role of the brain to directly perceive stimuli in the environment without conditioning; a rejection of behaviourism, the prevalent theory of the day to explain our responses. American psychologist James Gibson was renowned in his field for taking subjects out of the laboratory and into the dynamic complexity of ‘real-world’ environments. His model of perceptual systems serves as a foundation for people-environment studies. Gibson described the three components of the environment as the medium, the surface and substances¹⁴. The medium is the space, a qualitative atmospheric territory which defies definition through a Cartesian model; substances are elements which exert resistance on the occupant; and the surface is the mediator between the territory and the forces. The designer’s challenge is to parse a collection of discrete techniques into spatial strategies, using qualities inherent to the given interior enclosure.
Good architects can intuitively understand how to design elements of a calming environment without findings-based design guidelines — spas and abbeys are sure proof of that — but these programs often rely on significant rituals or material and spatial luxuries which are not available to the average public space. By teasing apart the elements of spaces which appeal to us on a human level, we can design more considered environments which introduce or enhance spatial qualities to encourage stress recovery. The term ‘restoration’ comes from the world of psychology and has to do with the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, also known as ‘rest and digest’ process. The idea that certain environments can improved our ability to restore cognitive functions is the focus of Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, experimental psychologists from the University of Michigan.
Kaplan and Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (ART) understands psychosocial restoration as a process which happens over time: the first stage of restoration is the clearing of ‘cognitive clutter’, or the worries and anxieties of daily life; the next step is a sensation of renewed ‘directed attention’ capacity; lastly, reflection on matters of personal importance. These stages, while not reliant on a particular environment, inevitably occur within an environment. The process can be hindered by stressful surroundings or supported by a space which promotes restoration through the following qualities: the sensation of ‘being away’, meaning that the environment harbours no reminders of external stressors; extent, or enough physical space to encourage exploration and ‘gentle fascination’ ; and ‘compatibility’, the fidelity of the space with the users’ demands of, and desires for, that environment¹⁵.
The Kaplans believed nature was the best example of a restorative environment, though they later profiled museums and religious buildings as restorative environments, if only for those already comfortable in them¹⁶ ¹⁷. The Ulrich model of restoration was established in response to a study which found that patients with a view to trees outside their hospital room experienced accelerated post-surgery healing and better pain management with less drugs¹⁸ ¹⁹. Though Ulrich focuses more on visual responses to naturalistic aesthetic experiences rather than the spatial qualities of the environment, it shares common foundations with ART in the high value placed on nature as a restorative environment. University of Waterloo psychology researchers found that the calming effects of nature cited by the Kaplans and Ulrich held true even in virtual reality environments²⁰. Their findings reiterated that nature is restorative, but also that urban environments are neutral in the absence of stressors such as traffic. Ellard²¹ has since expanded on the urban environment in finer grain, using consumer-grade biometric devices to explore the differences in physiological stress and perceived stress of urban pedestrians depending on the urban condition they were navigating e.g. walking near a park, crossing a busy intersection or passing a reflective glass tower façade. Even when urbanite pedestrians self-reported lower levels of stress, citing immunity through exposure, their skin conductance and heart rate levels indicated spikes of physiological stress when navigating busy traffic crosswalks.
These findings from researchers in the human sciences prove hunches that designers have long held about the way humans process our spatial environment and its impacts on our mental health and wellbeing. We intuitively know that people prefer access to green spaces, natural light, fresh air, engaging visuals, and spaces which facilitate social interaction, but the weight of scientific inquiry can help to strengthen the case when justifying these design decisions in the face of energy and financial efficiency directives. Urban stress affects everyone, but our built environment does not have to be a contributing factor. The work pursued in this thesis questions how architects might use insights from psychology and neuroscience about the innate perceptions and responses of humans to build in a way which serves our bodies and minds.
Chapter 2 | Findings-Informed Design: From Theory to Practice
A growing understanding in academia of the potentials for spatial design to make an impact on wellbeing has led to more partnerships between human science researchers and architecture practitioners, and integration of research both pre-design and post-occupancy. Large architecture firms are creating research and developments wings or in-house consultancy practices within their offices, to analyse the needs of the user groups and set impact priorities to guide the design. The projects which follow blend the worlds of aesthetic practice and scientific inquiry to create architecture for impact.
Case Study 1: Sensory Well-being Hub
A small team at HKS designed and built a Sensory Well-Being Hub as a response to the differing needs of the neurodiverse student body at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago. Comprised of a demountable framing structure which is somewhat reminiscent of a play-set made from industrial K’nex, it provides “hubs” for activities ranging from quiet to stimulating. The hub offers a unique, modular solution which allows students to refocus and calm down on their own terms. Through their research, the HKS team learned that diverse learners each have particular needs and desires from a respite environment, so the hub empowers each student to create an experience that works for them in order to find balance. Audio, visual, kinaesthetic and tactile features in the hub help students reset from a state of either hyper- or hypo-stimulation²². The design process involved breaking down the work into three phases: define, design and deliver. Defining the problem meant completing a literature review and a research plan, and meeting with users and expert consultants. This resulted in a set of principles which informed the design. Iterating through sketching, mock-up prototypes, scenario testing and analytical simulations led to a design package which was submitted for research proposals and approvals. To deliver the informed design product, the team installed the Hub’s design prototype, recruited participants to interact with the hub, and used data collected from those participants to analyse and draw conclusions, leading them to a design refresh. The result of this iterative synthesis was called Cocoon 2.0. The team wanted to make their design findings accessible to all, publishing an open-source instruction guide to anyone who wishes to build their own Sensory Hub. A rigorous research process and design thinking approach led this team of designers to a product which served the sensory needs of the students at the school in which it was implemented.
Case Study 2: Urban Thinkscape
The school environment is important, but young students who are not yet enrolled in full-day programming benefit more from access to enriched design in the public spaces of their everyday life. Shifting the focus from the school environment to education through play, Hume Architects and Temple University psychologists and educators fostered a pilot project called Urban Thinkscapes in Philadelphia. It was a community urban design project to encourage learning through play at bus stops and street corners in an underserved area of the city, in an attempt to bridge the learning gap between children who were given additional learning opportunities outside of school and those who were not. Community members were trained in data collection and observation to take note of how parents and children engaged with the design in the months after installation. The team found that parents and caregivers engaged with their children in areas where the Thinkscapes were deployed more than unaltered public spaces in the same neighbourhoods. On-site signage and a website connect caregivers to additional information and resources about the links between play and learning. The project was effective in creating education opportunities for the community for both young children and adult learners by providing enriched situated learning opportunities for children, and by deepening the existing role of mature members of the community as neighbourhood watch by providing the training to run aspects of a psychology experiment.
Case Study 3: A Space for Being
A Space for Being was Google’s installation for the Milan Design Week 2019. Reddymade Architecture and Muuto Interiors designed and built a series of evocative interior spaces informed by neuroaesthetics guidelines put forward by the Johns Hopkins Arts + Mind Lab. Guests were outfitted with a wristband which measured heart rate, breath rate, and skin temperature. Walking through the exhibition, the wristband measured the responses of each guests to create a customized, individual report, suggesting the space in which each guest felt “most comfortable or at ease” based on his or her real-time physiological responses. The biometric data was compared with the visitor’s perceptions of which room they preferred by asking them to rank their favourite. Though the project data was not collected for analysis, the installation revealed the testing pitfall of incongruous biometric and reported data: in conversation with Suchi Reddy, the architect who headed up the project at Reddymade, it was revealed that a number of guests were surprised by the room that their report suggested was the most enjoyable to them. If the user group did not predominantly consist of Milan Design Week guests from the design industry — people with strongly held opinions and an intellectualized way of experiencing built space — it would be curious to see how the fidelity of data congruency might chance. A major benefit of design stakeholder analysis is to understand the perspective of users who are unaffected by the aesthetic biases which are inherent to an architectural education. This ensures the success of a building at serving its community without alienating them. A Space for Being is a prototype for a model of experiential design testing using full-scale architecture models to workshop ideas.
Case Study Lessons
These projects share a common interest in bettering the experience of all people who occupy built spaces by learning from their responses. Pairing up with research labs in the life sciences gives designers access to verified findings and a framework for better understanding user impacts where there is no consistent format of recording and sharing findings within architecture.
Chapter 3 | Designing a Framework for Restorative Design
Frameworks have long been a way to impose order and spread movements and insights among architects. They have taken the format of codes and rulebooks, stories and infographics, and built artefacts. The first recorded architecture framework is responsible for Classical Architecture: the Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius. Written around 27 BC, the ten books are structured somewhat similarly to the contemporary building code, though they use allegories more than to isolate and describe the best practices for discrete components of building design. The most famous takeaway from the Ten Books is the assertion that buildings should exhibit stability, utility or “commodity”, and beauty, and that these qualities can be successfully integrated in a building by following Vitruvius’ prescriptions regarding urban design, building materials and finishing, water, sundials and clocks, and machines. His book on proportion centres the human man as the measure of all things: ratios of “perfect” numbers are reinforced by their supposed mapping in the ratios of a person’s — well, a man’s — fingers, palms, forearms and feet.
Centuries later, in 1570, Palladio reintroduced the Vitruvian proportions in his iconic villa layouts. Palladian architecture was governed by a “three-part solution”: dramatic exterior motifs, economical structural materials, and internal harmony and balance. Systematic rules of thumb inform the design and construction of the distinctive Palladian villas, replicated across Europe and even in America by the end of the 18th century. The first book of the four defines nine rule sets to determine parametric ‘identities’, all based on Vitruvian and harmonic proportions.
In the 20th century the focus of frameworks shifted from merely mirroring the human body to considering its comfort and health. Le Corbusier took the measure of man into the twenty-first century with his Modulor Scale. Likely inspired by the German Neufert’s Architect’s Data book published the decade before, this scale informed proportions for Corbusian interior design. Based on a man with one arm outstretched, the first set of ratios were based on a 5’9” man, but was updated to 6’0” in its second iteration to relate more to the taller “ideal” man of crime novels and cinema than the height of the average Frenchman.
By the late nineties there was enough scientific consensus on the environmental impact of the building industry to compile the LEED Standard, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. With goals to “evaluate the environmental performance of a building & encourage market transformation towards sustainable design”, it operates on a system of points or credits rating energy usage, water management, construction materials, indoor air quality, and waste control. LEED’s aim is to establish a uniform measuring system recognizing sustainable building practices. Its main goal is to take a holistic look at how a building impacts the environment.
The WELL Standard, similar in implementation to LEED but different in focus, is a reflection of the interest and increasing ability to codify user comfort and health by the early twenty-tens. An offshoot of the LEED indoor air quality standard as a starting point, WELL is only focused on the health and comfort of occupants. As well as air quality, WELL rates buildings on such factors as natural light, access to windows and nutrition, and more. Rather than being concerned with how a building is sustainable, WELL starts to measure the impact a building has on human beings. Since 2014, a partnership initiative between their respective administrative bodies has led to the LEED and WELL standards being offered in tandem.
The way in which architectural frameworks relate to the human always reflects the state of sciences at the time. The focus on the human body was one of proportions and aesthetics, reflected by the anatomy and mathematics study of Vitruvius in Ancient Rome. Human health became a focus as physiology brought ergonomics to the forefront. As human mind becomes better understood, a more informed focus on designing for perception and neurobiology is following.
The benefits of each of these frameworks are consistent standards of quality between projects, and increased legitimacy of the values represented by each framework. Architecture is inherently patron- or client-driven and good design which comes out above the minimum standards needs to be incentivized to the client. Frameworks infer value upon their constituent parts and make it easier for architects to win the fight for good design.
The Big Six: Factors for Restorative Design
As design frameworks have developed from aesthetic guides to safeguards of social and environmental health and comfort, they account for more and more human impacts. To some degree, each framework has used the previous model as a foundation. A psycho-physiological impact framework for restorative architecture would complement the existing foundation of environmental stewardship and user health laid by LEED and WELL, and act as a next step to creating environments which are mindful of the perceptual and cognitive impacts of spatial design.
The foundation for this framework was laid by sources native to the discipline, including Juhani Pallasmaa’s reader on neuroscience and architecture²³ and Sussman and Hollander’s Cognitive Architecture²⁴, as well as popular science books linking the built environment and its impacts of cognition by Colin Ellard²⁵ and Sarah Williams-Goldhagen²⁶. A literature review across psychology databases followed, homing in on experimental findings which focused on perceptual or physiological human impacts of material or spatial aspects.
I present below my efforts to synthesize the findings of these sources into a useful guide for designers who want to incorporate restorative qualities into their design, The Big Six: Factors for Restorative Design. The name is a riff on the OCEAN Big 5 Inventory used in psychology to quantify a subject’s extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness, the measure of which provides a rudimentary summary of a human personality. The value of The Big Six is to translate findings into spatial tactics. These findings are grouped into six slightly overlapping categories: Social Organization, Materiality, Lighting, Visual Complexity, Enclosure, and Layout. Overlaid on each sextant is the timeframe and scale at which the category is most impactful, and the senses which are engaged.
Social Organization: Designing a flexible perimeter to support introverts and extroverts
Anyone who has ever entered a crowded cafeteria or cinema and not been sure where to sit will understand the importance of perimeter areas in public space. Architect Ann Sussman and urban planning researcher Justin B. Hollander²⁷ cite Christopher Alexander, who describes a phenomenon common from middle school dances to the animal kingdom: “The life of a public square forms naturally around its edge. If the edge fails, the space never becomes lively.”²⁸ The borders of spaces appeal to our inherent tendency to ‘hug’ walls, a behavioural trait also called thigmotaxis. Thigmotactic behaviour increases with anxiety levels and unfamiliar surroundings and decreases with comfort and confidence in an environment. Designers can appeal to our wallflower tendencies by creating opportunities for the stressed and uncertain to find refuge around the perimeter of more public spaces, as well as more extroverted programming toward the center of the space for those who are comfortable in their setting and eager to engage. Accommodation of extroverted and introverted users can be manifested at the interior scale with seating configurations which allows for more prospect or more privacy, defined respectively by psychologist Humphrey Osmond as ‘sociopetal’ or ‘sociofugal’ social organization. In a study of environmental preferences of the socially ostracised, it was found that stressed or vulnerable people seek out sociofugal settings, whereas well-adjusted people exhibit more varied preferences²⁹. Field of vision is also important to social organization. Our brain prioritizes vision over all other senses, and prioritizes faces over other visuals, so design should consider the spatial factors which impact pro-social behaviour. The extent of our ‘social field of vision’ ends at ~100m, and our ‘emotional’ field of vision at ~22m. To create a prosocial environment, a designer should layer views through space by designing a route which permits a slower engagement with surroundings. This allows users to gain a more complete understanding of the space they are entering and the potential social interactions to approach or retreat from through where they choose to linger.
Materiality: Promote contact with natural materials and texture, control acoustics and prioritize tactility
Materials are often our first point of contact with the built environment, and the most impactful environments are those which use materials which consider all of the senses. The visual impact of spatial design is often considered first, and it has been found that we find more interest in materials which bear the marks of their fabrication. This is best expressed by using materials which retain their ‘natural’ texture or grain and appeal to our innate biophilic tendencies³⁰. Floor, ceiling and wall finishes impact the acoustical resonance of a space. Less reverberant is best in a restorative environment, as introverts and neurotic personality types have a markedly worse time focussing in loud environments³¹. The decision to specify low-VOC paint or operable windows to let in fresh air shape the olfactory experience, and generally, the more neutral the better scent sensitivities can exclude neurodivergent users and those with allergies to perfume. Stone or metal surfaces and fixtures feel colder than those made from wood, fabric or plastic, so care should be taken that these interactions are considered. The potential of touch in flexible materials can even be used for therapeutic effect: Temple Grandin³², Lucy McRae³³, Sean Ahlquist³⁴ have all experimented with materials which, using mechanical systems, vacuum pressure and inherent tensile properties respectively, create soothing sensory pressure which works much like a weighted blanket or a hug to promote the release of endorphins³⁵.
Lois Weinthal’s introduction in Toward a New Interior (2011) cites philosopher Michel Serres’ conception of the house as a living thing with a series of ‘skins’ that radiate from the body to the structure of a building, becoming less and less flexible with distance from the user of the space: soft clothing, thick tapestry, flexible veneer, rough concrete structure³⁶. Considering the potential sensory impact of each layer in relation to its proximity to the user is a helpful rule of thumb when making specifications.
Light: Maximize natural light and provide modifiable artificial light options.
The role of natural light in human wellness is immense: it suppresses melatonin production which impacts our circadian rhythms and provides information which makes navigating buildings easier: which walls are exterior walls, what time of day it is, what cardinal direction you are facing. Daylight, particularly diffuse daylight, is proven to improve mood and support meditative states better than artificial lighting alone³⁷. In spaces where a window is not possible or practical, good quality full-spectrum diffuse artificial lighting can serve as a viable replacement for daylighting. There is mounting data suggesting that different colours of light can support different physiological states³⁸, so providing the option to tune colour temperature to individual preference can enhance a relaxing experience. Naz et al. found that different colour temperatures and brightness levels could create very different user perceptions of otherwise identical environments in a CAVE-type display. By focusing on qualities of brightness, colour and surface texture, the study arrived at design principles for different desired spatial qualities: To make spaces feel warmer, more intimate and calmer, decrease brightness of lights; Increased brightness will result in a more cool, spacious and exciting affect; Blues, green and purples make a space feel more cool and calm, whereas reds, oranges and yellows make a space feel more warm and exciting³⁹. A traditionally restorative environment might focus on providing intimate areas with dimmable artificial lighting controls and contrast that with larger main areas featuring bright, natural light.
Visual Complexity: Highlight natural geometries and exposed construction details.
Visual complexity is a factor of architecture which can be considered and effectively implemented in structure, ornament, materiality, and décor. It has been found that fractal or ‘self-similar’ geometries between a ratio of 1.3 and 1.5 can improve the rate of physiological recovery from stress by around sixty percent⁴⁰. Fractals in this range are seen in nature and some artwork . The appropriation of fractal geometries into architecture has largely manifested in surface applications, which are effective in waiting areas but potentially dizzying in large doses, and in floorplans, where the fractal quality is hardly perceived by the user. It has proven more difficult to perform a holistic translation of geometry into built space⁴¹ ⁴² but Gothic and Hindu architecture provide examples of effective use of fractal forms, and some structural systems of Calatrava and Nervi may be said to do the same.
Visual complexity can also be engaged by designing connections which are legible. Legible construction means a layperson could understand how it is put together, causing their canonical neurons to fire as if they were actually performing the task themselves. We spend more time looking at and feel a greater connection to works that bear the mark of human craft⁴³. A restorative environment could integrate these principles by exposing architectural connections of a structural system or choosing a few high-impact areas to install fractal or biomimetic visual elements such as patterned window screens or privacy dividers.
Enclosure: Use ceiling height and curved elements to create areas of prospect and refuge.
Enclosure is a multivalent factor, as different people prefer different levels of enclosure, but there is some experimental concensus in people finding more open rooms and curving forms more beautiful than orthogonal ones⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ . Louis Kahn, whose work harnessed the power of dramatic proportions, admired the grand scale of the Baths of Caracalla, quipping that “there’s something about a 150-foot ceiling that makes a man a different kind of man” ⁴⁶. There is no doubt that those grand vaults would make anyone feel like an elevated version of themselves: but why might that be? Multiple studies focusing on the affective impact of geometry make connections to how the findings might for architectural space the form of interior spaces conclude that people prefer curved visual objects, but as architecture is much more complex than simple didactic adjectives like ‘rectilinear / curving’, ‘open / enclosed,’ it is important to take into account context. Ceiling height has measurable impacts on cognitive processing, priming our brains for different types of work. Whereas low ceilings improve our abilities to do focused tasks, higher ceilings support ideation⁴⁷. Since restoration is a process of self-reflection and best achieved with a wandering mind, high ceilings and interior curves are optimal.
Narrative: Exceed organizational and wayfinding best practices.
To design a building which is code-compliant is to design the worst building you can legally build. When considering how one might navigate the layout of a public space, be sure to exceed the standards of program-specific and Barrier-free design serves all members of an ageing society, as well as parents and caretakers with strollers or service workers pushing a cart. Layout comprises of narrative and intuitive way-finding, which engage us and help us navigate a space without much mental energy. Narrative plays into our collective desire to understand events as a continuous, sensical progression; to tell a story. This is expressed spatially by designing clear wayfinding and providing points of interest along the way to motivate people along their intended route. The psychology of queueing has been well-funded in the service industry, from hour-long lines in theme parks to the elevator lobbies of corporate towers. Maintain a single-file queue where reasonable, as this layout minimizes anxiety for the people in line who fear missing out on the faster option. Installation of mildly stimulating distractions such as mirrors and eye-catching finishes are proven to minimize complaints regarding wait times and have the added benefit of adding aesthetic value to a space⁴⁸. It has been found that our brain activity is highest at the fork of paths, even if it is a familiar path, so creating dedicated routes with fewer options can beneficial to restoration where appropriate for certain activities or programs. Clear, intuitive and consistent wayfinding throughout the space will further serve to minimize cognitive load at decision-making points and make navigation less stressful⁴⁹ ⁵⁰. Thinking beyond code requirements and considering different needs will result in a coherent spatial narrative which is useful and calming to all users.
Conclusion
These factors are not a silver bullet to immediately initiate a state of restoration and recovery from stress: they are dependent on the time, scale and senses which are spent or used in a particular program. Not all of them will be applicable all of the time, and none of them exist in isolation from the others, but they provide a designer with a toolkit of strategies to bring calm and comfort into their design proposals. The application of this framework first in research, then in practice, could be part of a solution for stress in urban centres. I created a test design which could be used by an interdisciplinary team of researchers in architecture and beyond to further test the efficacy of this framework proposal, and a design exercise applying the principles to a retrofit of the Toronto Coach Terminal, an unfortunate entry point to the city used by many.
Sources
[1] UN World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. UN DESA (2018).
[2] McKenzie, Kwame. Globalization, Social Capital and Mental Health, Vol. 8 (England: SAGE Publications, 2008). p. 360–362.
[3]Lederbogen, Florian et al. “City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans.” Nature 474 (2011): 498–501.
[4] ibid.
[5] Trivedi, Jitendra K., Himanshu Sareen, and Mohan Dhyani. “Rapid Urbanization — its Impact on Mental Health: A South Asian Perspective.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry 50, no. 3 (2008): 161–165.
[6] Srivastava K. “Urbanization and mental health”. Industrial Psychiatry Journal 18 [serial online] (2009): 75–76. http://www.industrialpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2009/18/2/75/64028
[7] Duncan, Dustin T. et al. “The Built Environment and Depressive Symptoms among Urban Youth: A Spatial Regression Study”. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology Vol. 5 (2013). Pp. 11–25.
[8] Gong, Yi, et al. “A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Objective Measurements of the Urban Environment and Psychological Distress”. Environment International 96 (2016): 48–57.
[9] Galea, Sandro et al. “Urban built environment and depression: a multilevel analysis”. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 59:10 (2005): 822–827. doi: 10.1136/jech.2005.033084
[10] Ellard, Colin. Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life. 1st ed. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, (2015).
[11] Ibelings, Hans. Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers (1998).
[12] Forés, Jaime J. Ferrer. “Mat Urbanism: Growth and Change.” Projections 10. Designing for Growth and Change (Spring, 2013): 73–83.
[13] Pallasmaa, Juhani. “Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture”. Architecture and Neuroscience: A Tapio Wirkkala — Rut Bryk Reader, edited by Tidwell, Philip. Helsinki: Tapio Wirkkala — Rut Bryk Foundation (2013).
[14] Lucas, Ray. “Chapter 9: Environmental Psychology,” Research Methods for Architecture. Laurence King Publishing Ltd. (2016): 114–123.
[15] Hartig, Terry. “Restorative Environments.” Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, (2004): 273–279.
[16] Kaplan, S., L. V. Bardwell, and D. B. Slakter. “The Museum as a Restorative Environment.” Environment and Behavior 25, no. 6 (1993): 725–742.
[17] Ouellette, Pierre, Rachel Kaplan, and Stephen Kaplan. The Monastery as a Restorative Environment. Vol. 25 (2005).
[18] Hartig (2004)
[19] Ulrich, Roger S. et al., “Stress Recovery During Exposure to Natural and Urban Environments”, Journal of Environmental Psychology 11, (1991). Pp. 201–230.
[20] Valtchanov, Deltcho, Kevin R. Barton, and Colin Ellard. “Restorative Effects of Virtual Nature Settings.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 13, no. 5 (2010): 503–512.
[21] Ellard (2015)
[22] Park, Giyoung, Upali Nanda, Jonathan Essary, Melissa Hoelting, and Lisa Adams. Research Report: Sensory Wellbeing Hub. Dallas: HKS (2019).
[23] Pallasmaa (2013)
[24] Sussman, Ann and Justin B. Hollander. Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment. New York: Routledge (2015).
[25] Ellard (2015)
[26] Williams Goldhagen, Sarah. Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives. 1st ed. New York: HarperCollins (2017).
[27] Sussmann and Hollander (2015)
[28] ibid.
[29] Meagher, Benjamin R. and Kerry L. Marsh. Seeking the Safety of Sociofugal Space: Environmental Design Preferences Following Social Ostracism. Vol. 68 (2017).
[30] Kellert, Stephen R. Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection. Washington D.C.: Island Press (2005).
[31] Oseland, Nigel, and Paige Hodsman, “A psychoacoustical approach to resolving office noise distraction”, Journal of Corporate Real Estate. Vol. 20 №4, (2018) pp. 260–280.
[32] Grandin, Temple. “Calming Effects of Deep Touch Pressure in Patients with Autistic Disorder, College Students and Animals.” Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology 2, no. 1 (Jan, 1992).
[33] McRae, Lucy. “Future Day Spa.” (2015) Lucy McRae. Web. Accessed Nov. 13, 2018.
[34] Ahlquist, Sean, Leah Ketcheson, and Costanza Colombi. “Multisensory Architecture: The Dynamic Interplay of Environment, Movement and Social Function.” Architectural Design Special Issue: Design for Health, 87(2), (2017): 90–99.
[35] ibid.
[36] Weinthal, Lois. “Introduction.” Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory. Hudson: Princeton Architectural Press (2011): 10–15.
[37] Wardono, Prabu; Wibisono, Andriyanto. “Towards Meditative Experience Using Daylight”. Journal of Asian Behavioural Studies, 3:8 (May 2018): 183–190.
[38] Elliot, Andrew J. “Color and Psychological Functioning: A Review of Theoretical and Empirical Work.” Frontiers in Psychology 6, (2015): 368.
[39] Naz, Asma, Regis Kopper, Ryan McMahan, and Mihai Nadin. “Emotional Qualities of VR Space.” IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) Conference 2017, March 18–22, 2017 (March 18, 2017).)
[40] Taylor, Richard P., B. Spehar, P. van Donkelaar, C. Hagerhall, “Perceptual and physiological responses to Jackson Pollock’s fractals”. Art and the Brain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5 1–13 (2011)
[41] Joye, Yannick. “Fractal Architecture Could be Good for You.” Journal of Environmental Psychology Vol. 9 (2007).
[42] Salingaros, Nikos. “Fractal Art and Architecture Reduce Physiological Stress”. JBU — Journal of Biourbanism, №3, (March 2013).
[43] Williams Goldhagen (2017: 160–161)
[44] Vartanian, Oshin, Gorka Navarrete, Anjan Chatterjee, et. al. “Architectural Design and the Brain: Effects of Ceiling Height and Perceived Enclosure on Beauty Judgments and Approach-Avoidance Decisions”. Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 41 (2015).
[45] Banaei, Maryam, Javad Hatami, Abbas Yazdanfar, and Klaus Gramann. “Walking through Architectural Spaces: The Impact of Interior Forms on Human Brain Dynamics.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 11, (2017): 447.
[46] Williams-Goldhagen (2017: xxxii)
[47] Meyers-Levy, Joan and Rui (Juliet) Zhu. “The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing that People Use.” Journal of Consumer Research 34, (June 1, 2007).
[48] Maister, D.H., “The Psychology of Waiting Lines in the Service Encounter: Managing Employee-Customer Interaction in Service Business.” (1985)
[49] City of Toronto MTO Transit-Supportive Guidelines (2016)
[50] Karandinou, Anastasia and Louise Turner. “Architecture and Neuroscience; what can the EEG Recording of Brain Activity Reveal about a Walk through Everyday Spaces?” International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems 32, no. 1 (June 30, 2017): S54-S65.
